


Before and After

by mithrel



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Blanket Permission, Episode Tag, Episode: s05e22 Swan Song, Fluff, M/M, Podfic Welcome
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-07-05
Updated: 2010-07-05
Packaged: 2017-11-11 07:16:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 526
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/475983
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mithrel/pseuds/mithrel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Michael remembers. For the schmoop_bingo prompt "Long lost love."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Before and After

After the long and rushing descent, Lucifer alternately clinging to him and clawing at him in rage, they land.

It’s cold, and dark, the light of his brother’s Grace and his own the only illumination. The walls press in, yet there’s a sense of looming infinity just beyond sight.

He looks at his brother, lying huddled hopelessly a few feet away from him. He should be reacting worse than Lucifer, who arguably belonged here. But seeing Lucifer’s true form, however battered it might be, reminds him of better days.

It reminds him of the days when Lucifer was bright and laughing, Heaven’s favored son, of how they would race across the skies of Heaven for the sheer glory of flight, and then collapse, exhausted, to lie together in the grass.

It reminds him of a time when Heaven was peaceful, before the decimation of its ranks and the departure of the Father.

One incident springs to his mind, not long before the beginning of the War. He had been lying with Lucifer, their wings twined together, when he’d looked at him with an uncharacteristically serious look on his face.

“I love you, you know.”

Michael had smiled at him, somewhat bemused. “Yes, of course I know. And I love you.”

“No matter what?”

The question had taken him by surprise, but not as much as the uncertain tone in which it was uttered. Lucifer should have known that he’d always love him. “No matter what.”

Lucifer had sighed, and his light had dimmed momentarily. “I love you. And I always will. No matter what happens I want you to remember that.”

Then had come Lucifer’s attempts to persuade him to rebel, Michael’s horrified refusal and the terrible battle that followed. Then the millennia alone, nursing his wounds, the confrontation in the cemetery, the temptation he’d felt, the desire to just let Lucifer go his own way. The vitriol he’d spewed in response, the words regretted as soon as he’d said them. The look on his brother’s face as the word _monster_ struck home.

Then Dean Winchester and that pipsqueak angel interfering and the fall. He feels a flash of rage at their presumption before it washes away. It’s pointless.

He looks again at Lucifer and realizes that he failed the test. Lucifer was right; they should have walked away. Now his brother is confined again. That hurts more than his own imprisonment. He feels a brief flash of anger at his Father for abandoning them before it too fades under the need to comfort his brother.

Lucifer flinches as Michael comes near him, but Michael stretches his wings out to cover him and extends his Grace to just beyond the borders of his brother’s. He waits, not sure if the apology will be accepted, half expecting Lucifer to lash out.

But Lucifer only sighs and leans against him, his Grace coming out to join with Michael’s.

“I told you I’d love you no matter what.”

Lucifer pulls back to look at him incredulously. “After I rebelled? After I tried to convince you to rebel? How can you love me?”

“Because,” Michael murmurs. “You’re still my brother.”


End file.
